Family Happiness

By Leo Tolstoy

"Family Happiness" unfolds the intimate narrative of Masha, a young woman whose journey into love begins with the thrill of romance with Sergei, a friend of her late father. As their relationship evolves from ardent love to marriage, Tolstoy delves into the complexities that weave through domestic life, examining the shifts in intimacy, happiness, and the search for meaning within the bonds of family. This poignant novella offers a deep reflection on the evolving nature of love and the true essence of familial bliss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Interactive Media
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781910558225

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy grew up in Russia, raised by a elderly aunt and educated by French tutors while studying at Kazen University before giving up on his education and volunteering for military duty. When writing his greatest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy drew upon his diaries for material. At eighty-two, while away from home, he suffered from declining health and died in Astapovo, Riazan in 1910.

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Leo Tolstoy

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Leo Tolstoy

Family Happiness

Published by Sovereign

This edition first published in 2014

Copyright © 2014 Sovereign

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 9781910558225

Contents

PART I

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

PART II

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

PART I

CHAPTER 1

We were in mourning for my mother, who had died in the autumn, and I spent all that winter alone in the country with Katya and Sonya.

Katya was an old friend of the family, our governess who had brought us all up, and I had known and loved her since my earliest recollections. Sonya was my younger sister. It was a dark and sad winter which we spent in our old house of Pokrovskoye. The weather was cold and so windy that the snowdrifts came higher than the windows; the panes were almost always dimmed by frost, and we seldom walked or drove anywhere throughout the winter. Our visitors were few, and those who came brought no addition of cheerfulness or happiness to the household. They all wore sad faces and spoke low, as if they were afraid of waking someone; they never laughed, but sighed and often shed tears as they looked at me and especially at little Sonya in her black frock. The feeling of death clung to the house; the air was still filled with the grief and horror of death. My mother’s room was kept locked; and whenever I passed it on my way to bed, I felt a strange uncomfortable impulse to look into that cold empty room.

I was then seventeen; and in the very year of her death my mother was intending to move to Petersburg, in order to take me into society. The loss of my mother was a great grief to me; but I must confess to another feeling behind that grief — a feeling that though I was young and pretty (so everybody told me), I was wasting a second winter in the solitude of the country. Before the winter ended, this sense of dejection, solitude, and simple boredom increased to such an extent that I refused to leave my room or open the piano or take up a book. When Katya urged me to find some occupation, I said that I did not feel able for it; but in my heart I said, What is the good of it? What is the good of doing anything, when the best part of my life is being wasted like this? and to this question, tears were my only answer.

I was told that I was growing thin and losing my looks; but even this failed to interest me. What did it matter? For whom? I felt that my whole life was bound to go on in the same solitude and helpless dreariness, from which I had myself no strength and even no wish to escape. Towards the end of winter Katya became anxious about me and determined to make an effort to take me abroad. But money was needed for this, and we hardly knew how our affairs stood after my mother’s death. Our guardian, who was to come and clear up our position, was expected every day.

In March he arrived.

Well, thank God! Katya said to me one day, when I was walking up and down the room like a shadow, without occupation, without a thought, and without a wish. Sergey Mikhaylych has arrived; he has sent to inquire about us and means to come here for dinner. You must rouse yourself, dear Mashechka, she added, or what will he think of you? He was so fond of you all.

Sergey Mikhaylych was our near neighbor, and, though a much younger man, had been a friend of my father’s. His coming was likely to change our plans and to make it possible to leave the country; and also I had grown up in the habit of love and regard for him; and when Katya begged me to rouse myself, she guessed rightly that it would give me especial pain to show to disadvantage before him, more than before any other of our friends. Like everyone in the house, from Katya and his god-daughter Sonya down to the helper in the stables, I loved him from old habit; and also he had a special significance for me, owing to a remark which my mother had once made in my presence. I should like you to marry a man like him, she said. At the time this seemed to me strange and even unpleasant. My ideal husband was quite different: he was to be thin, pale, and sad; and Sergey Mikhaylych was middle-aged, tall, robust, and always, as it seemed to me, in good spirits. But still my mother’s words stuck in my head; and even six years before this time, when I was eleven, and he still said thou to me, and played with me, and called me by the pet-name of violet — even then I sometimes asked myself in a fright, What shall I do, if he suddenly wants to marry me?

Before our dinner, to which Katya made an addition of sweets and a dish of spinach, Sergey Mikhaylych arrived. From the window I watched him drive up to the house in a small sleigh; but as soon as it turned the corner, I hastened to the drawing room, meaning to pretend that his visit was a complete surprise. But when I heard his tramp and loud voice and Katya’s footsteps in the hall, I lost patience and went to meet him myself. He was holding Katya’s hand, talking loud, and smiling. When he saw me, he stopped and looked at me for a time without bowing. I was uncomfortable and felt myself blushing.

Can this be really you? he said in his plain decisive way, walking towards me with his arms apart. Is so great a change possible? How grown-up you are! I used to call you violet", but now you are a rose in full bloom!’

He took my hand in his own large hand and pressed it so hard that it almost hurt. Expecting him to kiss my hand, I bent towards him, but he only pressed it again and looked straight into my eyes with the old firmness and cheerfulness in his face.

It was six years since I had seen him last. He was much changed — older and darker in complexion; and he now wore whiskers which did not become him at all; but much remained the same — his simple manner, the large features of his honest open face, his bright intelligent eyes, his friendly, almost boyish, smile.

Five minutes later he had ceased to be a visitor and had become the friend of us all, even of the servants, whose visible eagerness to wait on him proved their pleasure at his arrival. He behaved quite unlike the neighbors who had visited us after my mother’s death. they had thought it necessary to be silent when they sat with us, and to shed tears. He, on the contrary, was cheerful and talkative, and said not a word about my mother, so that this indifference seemed strange to me at first and even improper on the part of so close a friend. But I understood later that what seemed indifference was sincerity, and I felt grateful for it. In the evening Katya poured out tea, sitting in her old place in the drawing room, where she used to sit in my mother’s lifetime; our old butler Grigori had hunted out one of my father’s pipes and brought it to him; and he began to walk up and down the room as he used to do in past days.

How many terrible changes there are in this house, when one thinks of it all! he said, stopping in his walk.

Yes, said Katya with a sigh; and then she put the lid on the samovar and looked at him, quite ready to burst out crying.

I suppose you remember your father? he said, turning to me.

Not clearly, I answered.

How happy you would have been together now! he added in a low voice, looking thoughtfully at my face above the eyes. I was very fond of him, he added in a still lower tone, and it seemed to me that his eyes were shining more than usual.

And now God has taken her too! said Katya; and at once she laid her napkin on the teapot, took out her handkerchief, and began to cry.

Yes, the changes in this house are terrible, he repeated, turning away. Sonya, show me your toys, he added after a little and went off to the parlor. When he had gone, I looked at Katya with eyes full of tears.

What a splendid friend he is! she said. And, though he was no relation, I did really feel a kind of warmth and comfort in the sympathy of this good man.

I could hear him moving about in the parlor with Sonya, and the sound of her high childish voice. I sent tea to him there; and I heard him sit down at the piano and strike the keys with Sonya’s little hands.

Then his voice came — Marya Aleksandrovna, come here and play something.

I liked his easy behavior to me and his friendly tone of command; I got up and went to him.

Play this, he said, opening a book of Beethoven’s music at the adagio of the Moonlight Sonata. Let me hear how you play, he added, and went off to a corner of the room, carrying his cup with him.

I somehow felt that with him it was impossible to refuse or to say beforehand that I played badly: I sat down obediently at the piano and began to play as well as I could; yet I was afraid of criticism, because I knew that he understood and enjoyed music. The adagio suited the remembrance of past days evoked by our conversation at tea, and I believe that I played it

Reviews for Family Happiness

[erinjamieson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I believe this short story to be an illustration of the relationship of the church to Christ. We are the unfaithful bride looking for joy in cheap pleasure over the everlasting joy of being united with Christ. We've lost sight of the covenant love of Christ.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a story that begins as a fairy tale romance and ends in maternal happiness or sadness depending on your point of view.Narrated by Masha, a teenage girl, the story tells of a courtship that has the trappings of a mere family friendship. Masha's falls in love with an older family friend, Sergey Mikhaylych whos is in his mid-thirties. Eros grips Masha and her love develops until she must reveal it to Sergey Mikhaylych and discovers that he also is deeply in love. If he has resisted her it was because of his fear that the age difference between them would lead the very young Masha to tire of him. He likes to be still and quiet, he tells her, while she will want to explore and discover more and more about life. Is Masha naive? Perhaps, but she may merely be willful. Her view of their "love" is idealized and she is unsure about her own consciousness of the world she has entered at such a young age. Nonetheless the couple are apparently passionately happy, so they engage to be married and move to Mikhaylych's home. Masha soon feels impatient with the quiet order of life on the estate, notwithstanding the powerful understanding and love that remains between the two. She thinks to herself, "I began to feel lonely, that life was repeating itself, that there was nothing new either in him or myself, and that we were merely going back to what had been before."(p 62) To assuage her anxiety, they decide to spend a few weeks in St. Petersburg. Sergey Mikhaylych agrees to take Masha to an aristocratic ball. He hates "society" but she is enchanted with it and She becomes a regular, the darling of the countesses and princes, with her rural charm and her beauty. Sergey Mikhaylych, at first very pleased with Petersburg society's enthusiasm for his wife, frowns on her passion for "society"; but he does not try to influence Masha. She is not unaware of his feelings but tells herself that "If the relation between us has become a little different, everything will be the same again in summer, when we shall be alone in our house at Nikolskoe with Tatyana Semenovna."(p 74)Out of respect for her, Sergey Mikhaylych allows his young wife to discover the truth about the emptiness and ugliness of "society" on her own. But his trust in her is damaged as he watches how dazzled she is by this world. Finally they confront each other about their differences. They argue but do not treat their conflict as something that can be resolved through negotiation. Both are shocked and mortified that their intense love has suddenly been called into question. She notices, "His face seemed to me to have grown suddenly old and disagreeable".(p 80) Her idealism has faded and with it the romance of her relationship. Because of pride, they both refuse to talk about it. The trust and the closeness are gone. Only courteous friendship remains. Masha yearns to return to the passionate closeness they had known before Petersburg. They go back to the country. Though she gives birth to children and the couple has a good life, she despairs. They can barely be together by themselves. Finally she asks him to explain why he did not try to guide and direct her away from the balls and the parties in Petersburg. The novella ends with a suggestion that she has accepted maternal happiness. Will this carry them forward together? And at what price--the loss of Romance? Tolstoy deftly depicts nature throughout the story and uses music as a motif as well. Masha loves to play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", especially the darkly romantic first movement. But there is a chilling scene near the end of the story when she plays the sonata:"At the end of the first movement I looked round instinctively to the corner where he used once to sit and listen to my playing. He was not there: his chair, long unmoved, was still in its place: through the window I could see a lilac-bush against the light of the setting sun: the freshness of evening streamed through the open windows . . . I recalled with pain the irrevocable past, and timidly imagined the future. But for me there seemed to be no future, no desires at all and no hopes."(p 97)While this seems bleak, there is hope by the end of the story with the suggestion that maternal love could be the foundation for a different kind of "Family Happiness".

[fuzzy_patters · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Family Happiness is about a young woman who marries an older man and the trials and tribulations of trying to remain in love while wanting different things out of life due to their age differences. It is psychological in its approach and is told in the first person from the perspective of the young wife. This serves to give the reader the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the inner turmoil of the character, Masha, and her struggle to understand herself and her husband better.I thought that it was a good book, but I was a little let down. This was my first Tolstoy but not my first nineteenth century Russian novel, as I have read three Dostoevsky novels. I was expecting this book to be more like those, but it never packed the punch for me that those did. If anything, it was more similar to a novel like Jane Eyre than anything by Dostoevsky.

[ctpress_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The young woman Masha falls in love with a former friend of her deceased father. They marry and at first they are happy together.But soon she’s bored, bothered and bewildered in her new married life. Does she really love her husband - does he love her? Is this all there is to married life? He’s all kindness yet it’s not enough for her - specially not when she’s introduced to the exciting social life in Sct. Petersburg. They drift apart and she flirts with an Italian adventurer. What, Tolstoy seems to ask, was the reason for the unhappiness that crept into this seemingly perfect marriage? And is there a way back to the former state of happiness? The novella works best in the beginning with all the youthful hopes and dreams, desires and delights. It was difficult for me to understand Masha and her unhappiness. This is not one of Tolstoy’s best stories - but still a fairly good read.